Job Description

VoiceAbility are recruiting people to join its Board of Trustees to help lead our charity. Our advocates empower people with disabilities and mental health issues to take control of their lives, and to make their own decisions. We support people on a broad range of issues including people going through care need assessments and reviews, and people under section. We also have peer mentoring and support programmes so that people who are experts by experience can support other people to live their own lives.

We have 300 members of staff, and our advocates support over 30,000 people every year. We are a national charity and work in many areas across England. We have an annual turnover of £9million.

We put the people we work with at the heart of our organisation and have developed high quality services. We are passionate about supporting people to have choice and control in their lives.

About the role

As a Trustee you will play a key role in deciding on the very big changes that VoiceAbility should make in the years ahead, ensuring that we continue to empower people to have a strong voice, and real rights and control over their lives. Our Trustees play an integral role in leading our charity to achieve its social mission, strategic aims and objectives. Now is a particularly exciting time to join our organisation, as we focus on growing our social impact through developing current and new approaches to respond to people who want and need our support.

Our strategy is aimed at ensuring that we continue to improve what we do, achieve greater social impact, and operate more effectively and efficiently. Our focus is on quality and performance improvement, sustainability, and diversifying our services, in order to meet our social mission more fully. If you have a passion for our mission, and you have the commercial, strategic, and financial acumen to support us to meet our strategic objectives, we would be delighted to hear from you.

We also believe that organisations like VoiceAbility do a better job when the people we support have a big say in running the organisation. So we are also looking for people who can use their own experience of using social care and health services, or of being carers, to help set the direction and make the big decisions about how VoiceAbility runs.

Person Specification

We are most interested in hearing from people who have one or more of the following.

Strong commercial and financial skills.

People who are able to challenge and support the executive team when developing business plans and models.

Full accountancy qualifications.

Experience of new services, developing and marketing new products.

Legal understanding for example from health, social care or company law or similar.

Experience as disabled people or as people with long-term health conditions or as carers AND who can use this experience to think about how VoiceAbility needs to develop and change

Time Commitment

Trustees need to work 6 - 8 days per year in total. This includes coming to four Board meetings per year, held in turn in London and Cambridge.

How to apply

Applications must be made via the TrusteeWorks Team at Reach Volunteering. Please send your CV to trusteeworks@reachvolunteering.org.uk.